All Sorts of Waterfowl

The Texas Gulf Coast is full of all sorts of waterfowl and migrating birds in their winter home....snowbirds!  With the intercoastal waterway that runs around the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf of Mexico Coast so that commerce and recreational travel can be accomplished without having to withstand the wiles of the larger ocean and gulf.  What this ICW also provides is amble swamps, ponds, sloughs, and other bodies of salt, fresh and brackish (being both salt and fresh) water sprinkled throughout the ICW.  And the Port Aransas area is rife with this sort of coastal waterways and a very happy balance between nature and commerce.  

One of the natural phenomenons is a freshwater area that houses most of the wintering whooping crane population in the US.  But these cranes also bring a ton like around 360 different coastal and waterfowl to the area.  The space is so crowded that for a photographer it's a bonanza of shots.

For the wildlife though, it can get a little crowded, and when a snowy egret and tri-color heron get in each other's way, there can be some squawking and definite territorial discussions going on.  These two pranced around for most of the morning with the egret getting the upper hand, and a goodly amount of fishes to gulp down as well.  

And of course with a lot of birds, come a lot of varieties of similar species, like snowy egret, great egret, cattle egret, great white heron, great blue heron, tricolor heron, on and on.  This one below is a Little Heron in blooming plumage (or rather breeding plumage).  No matter, they are all still beautiful birds.

For the last couple of days it's been rainy, and being from a relatively dry climate, I'm not used to all this moisture and humidity!  But being on the coast it's really damp down here.  Like we humans, the birds love the sun coming out and the birds showed up today!.  

These are cute little Stilts that like to poke around in the water.  All I can imagine is that there must be lots of food there, cause this is what the birds do most of the time - poke around in the water!

This is a tri-color heron which is very common in this area of the Gulf Coast.  It's really a beautiful bird.

Then there came a huge conversation about a fairly non-descript bird if it was a juvenile heron or bittern.  I took up the argument for the juvenile heron - black-crowned night heron to be exact.

The confusion was if this was a bittern which has a completely different look

They look alike, but this was definitely a juvenile.  

There were so many, that's a whole other post tomorrow!